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My examples aren't about nicknames, they're about the difference between someone's full name, and their name.

And even in American name culture it's not obvious how to transform someone's legal name to their name. How would you encode that the name of "William Henry Gates III" is actually "Bill Gates" ?

"William" - nope.

"Mr III" - no no no.

"Mr William H. G. III" - nooooooooooo.




That was my point: trying to account for every preference an user might have or every particular scenario is too complex and takes much time and human resources. The right thing is to address the majority of your user base.

To take your example, why should my app encode that "William Henry Gates III" is actually "Bill Gates"? I will provide a form with first name and last name and Mr Gates can register as "Bill" "Gates" or "William Henry" "Gates".

I have three given names and I find it a non issue completing forms. And that's because a string can contain white spaces or even be empty so you can encode any arbitrary combination of first name + last name.

Also, people get to much into politics, trying to be "revolutionary" instead of trying to solve the technical issue at hand.

I can solve a technical problem in 2 minutes or get in political phylosophy and argue for 2 years without solving anything and without helping anyone. I rather solve the problem.


Don't dismiss nicknames. In Germany e.g. you can put an artist name on the id card and your pass port.




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